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Happening, The (US - DVD R1)

Gabe is almost at a loss for words. Almost, he has a few four letterers...

Feature

One incredibly boring day in Central Park hundreds of people find themselves unable to speak or walk correctly, and are soon finding creative ways to kill themselves. Similar ‘happenings’ begin to occur elsewhere on the East coast, mostly in areas with large populations and trees. In reaction to all the scariness a group of boring people take to the countryside looking for answers.

I really, really, reallyreallyreally wanted to be the guy that liked The Happening. I’ve at least been entertained by every M. Night Shyamalan film since The Sixth Sense, even Lady in the Water (good performances), but Goddamn if his latest isn’t one of the most boldly awful major studio films I’ve seen in a long while.

Everything you’ve heard about The Happening is true. All the ‘cool’ stuff in the film isn’t only given away in the red band trailer, it’s almost entirely delegated to the front quarter of the film. The performances are almost unfathomably and uniformly terrible. The tone teeters into the hilarious when unintended. The plot is based around an idea that could barely sustain a twenty-two minute episode of The Twilight Zone, and the filler is taken mostly from Spielberg’s War of the Worlds remake, every George Romero zombie movie, and Shyamalan’s own Signs. The twist puts the film on the level of other lumpish and misguided ‘environmental thrillers’ like The Day After Tomorrow, and the scientific explanations make the scientists of Earth vs. the Flying Saucers sound downright reputable. The biggest crime of them all is the film’s pedestrian look, which falls somewhere between made for TV drama and Shyamalan impersonating himself.

Shyamalan, who pulled recent career bests out of Bruce Willis and Mel Gibson, lets his actors flounder in his painfully stilted dialogue. I will continue to defend many of the more wooden performances in the Star Wars prequels as forgivable cases of style over substance, but The Happening’s perfectly capable actors look atrocious the whole way through for seemingly no good reason (we'll argue George Lucas' 'good reasons' some other time). Mark Wahlberg, who I now know is capable of stealing a Martin Scorsese movie from Jack Nicholson, Matt Damon and Leonardo DiCaprio, performs like a beauty queen contestant asked to list the first forty-seven numbers of pi. If I wasn’t made to believe otherwise by the behind the scenes material, I’d swear that Wahlberg thought he was acting in a spoof. His confused, googly eyes are just too freaking funny for words. The rest of the cast doesn’t do much better, and the Tarantino by way of eleventh grade creative writing dialogue doesn’t help. Shyamalan also consistently breaks the first rule of screenwriting—show, don’t tell—by making his characters gracelessly explain the plot over and over again.

The basic premise of people mysteriously losing control of their bodies and minds and killing themselves is terrifying, and I’d like to think that pre-head-up-his-ass Shyamalan could’ve squeezed some real atmosphere out of the situation, but everything that’s meant to be frightening is almost ingeniously hilarious. If Shyamalan could’ve come out after the film’s bad reception and claimed it was a comedy I would’ve believed him 100%, because there is nothing shocking about the telegraphed sequences of people doing themselves in in a particularly Monty Python-esque manner. Sadly, the silliness still isn’t enough to recommend the film.

Video

I keep forgetting that Fox is cheap and fears bootlegging more than nuclear war. My screener is a single layered burned disc, and it shows it at every turn. The camera moves slowly, cue streams, the camera moves faster, cue pixel attack. Tak Fujimoto is a fine addition to the film’s mediocre approach, he doesn’t create anything super memorable, nor does he drop the ball and create anything murky. All in all I find it nearly impossible to effectively review the intricacies of this transfer because of the artefacts and compression noise, so we’ll just leave it at colourful.

Audio

Single layer protection doesn’t hurt the Dolby Digital 5.1 track too much, though general volume levels are a bit low. Shyamalan is well known for his love of super subtle sound design that hides in the corners waiting to leap out at us when something scary happens, but this time he may’ve pushed it a little too far. Sometimes I noticed positively zero sound, and I don’t assume it was on purpose. Once again it’s James Newton Howard that pulls his director out of the bottom pit of total shitsville. The Happening’s music is filled with quotes to other work, mostly those of Hitchcockian Bernard Herrman scores, but it sounds great, and classes up a few scenes here and there.

Extras

Our extra slices of Shyamalanian silliness begin with four deleted/extended scenes. The first scene is an alternate opening that over explains the marital problems the Zooey Deschanel and Mark Wahlberg characters are having. The scene gives the final scenes an even more clichéd motivation than what’s presented in the final cut. The other four scenes feature additional violence not seen in the original cut. They mostly succeed in making the film even funnier. Each scene is optionally preceded by a Shyamalan intro, where he excitedly (desperately?) tells us how awesome the digital gore effects are. They really aren’t. The scenes run about sixteen minutes, and feature extremely low volume stereo sound.

‘The Hard Cut’ features a less giddy and more expectedly pretentious Shyamalan talking about the ‘genius’ of the film’s violence and message. Apparently the R rating was the Fox brass’ idea, not the writer/director’s, which partially explains the awkward nature of the violence. The problem is that they keep referring to the film as a ‘hard’ R, which it really is not, much to my chagrin. The featurette runs nine minutes, takes place on the set of the farmhouse shooting scene, and features interviews with the cast and crew. In M. Night’s defense, he appears to be a friendly guy when on-set, his bloated ego is apparently delegated to his interviews.

‘I Hear You Whispering’ is a four minute look at the film’s last act, which features the productions only good performance (Betty Buckly), but is ultimately twenty minutes that have no place in the film. The Mrs. Jones sequence is basically a visual call back to several of Signs’ best moments, and a narrative call back to the Tim Robbins scenes from War of the Worlds.

‘The Happening— Visions of The Happening: A Making of’(yes, that’s the real title) is twelve minutes all about the making of the ‘Best B-Movie Ever’, which apparently became something deeper. Seriously, there’s no intended humour in this film according to everyone involved behind the scenes, except maybe the scene were Wahlberg speaks to a plant. Shyamalan talks about his cast, who were evidently hired for their buoyancy, the cast talk about their characters as if they were real people, the producer talks about Shyamalan as a visionary, and everyone complains about all the scary grasshoppers on set. Riveting.

‘A Day for Night’ (very clever pun guys, works on two levels, huh?) is six and a half minutes more behind the scenes footage from the farm house set (apparently that’s the only day they had a documentary crew). This section is just raw footage set to sections of the film’s score, so we’re saved the pain of turgid interviews.

‘Elements of a Scene’ is a ten minute exploration of one of the film’s only scenes that exhibits Shyamalan’s once sure handed control of film direction—the Jeep vs. tree scene. The featurette covers the scene from digital pre-viz and preparation, through the filming process, stunts, acting, but not digital effects enhancement. Clerks fans can catch a better glimpse of Brian O'Halloran in this section.

The whole mess ends with a gag reel and trailers for Street Kings and Mirrors. They could’ve at least included The Happening’s red band trailer. That’s actually the ideal way to watch the film.

Overall

Ok, I'm giving up on Mr. M Night just like the rest of you, and I'll continue hoping against hope that this whole Avatar the Last Airbender project will fall apart before he has a chance to mess it up. The Happening is basically a total wash. It flounders as a thriller or horror movie because of unintentional humour, it flops as a drama because of uninteresting characters and almost unimaginally bad acting, and all the unintentional comedy isn’t quite belly jiggling enough to recommend a so bad it’s good viewing. I give Shayamalan credit for two sequences—the genuinely disturbing sequence of construction workers plummeting to their deaths, and a well directed mini-movie about the life of a gun. These two scenes plus Newton Howard’s score bring me to my final score.

23rd October 2008 3:04#2

M. Night Shyamalan goes from The Sixth Sense to this?? I'm so glad I didn't buy The Happening on Blu-ray. I love Zooey Deschanel and her movies, but I think she shouldn't have wasted her time on this one. And Mark Wahlberg was so clueless in this movie, and he's playing a science teacher for crying out loud! You'll do better spending your $30 on something else altogether.

23rd October 2008 3:13#3

Jesus Christ. Why the *beep* do people keep bashing on films? If you have nothing nice to say don't say it at all. At least say "well I didn't like it". Instead of "I HATED IT!!!!!" Honestly it's a film. Give or take. M. Night actually has a brain.

23rd October 2008 3:23#4

horrorfan25 wrote: Jesus Christ. Why the *beep* do people keep bashing on films? If you have nothing nice to say don't say it at all. At least say "well I didn't like it". Instead of "I HATED IT!!!!!" Honestly it's a film. Give or take. M. Night actually has a brain.

Well, generally people's opinions on movies are what we want to hear. If people really hate a movie, they're gonna say so. Everyone can't say, "O my, this movie was awesome." No, we have to hear the bad things too, that's how it works. And when a movie that's really bad comes along, of course it's going to get slaughtered.

That said, I thought this movie was a joke. I totally agree with you Gabe about thinking Wahlberg was acting in a spoof. Every time he uttered something, I was thinking "Is this a joke?" It really seemed like everyone was acting extremely sarcastic and that it was a sketch show. Hard to explain unless you've seen it. But yeah, I wouldn't say I absolutely hated this movie, I just thought it was one of the worst big-budget studio movies to come out in recent memory, literally.

23rd October 2008 5:20#6

I want to hear this movie, mostly interested in the score. Yeah, Signs was okay- There a positive statement. I have seen many of his movies several times and all disappoint. They get hyped up as being original, it's a gimmick.

23rd October 2008 7:10#9

The best thing about this terrible movie is that Marky Mark is essentially playing his brilliant character from 'I Heart Huckabees' beyond that this is like feels like someone trying to do an M Night movie and failing to grasp what he does so well. Shame the person doing it is actually M Night!

23rd October 2008 8:18#10

horrorfan25 wrote: Jesus Christ. Why the *beep* do people keep bashing on films? If you have nothing nice to say don't say it at all. At least say "well I didn't like it". Instead of "I HATED IT!!!!!" Honestly it's a film. Give or take. M. Night actually has a brain. You are aware that this is a DVD news and reviews website, where we critically evaluate material submitted to us by movie studios, aren't you?

23rd October 2008 9:12#11

Chris Gould wrote: horrorfan25 wrote: Jesus Christ. Why the *beep* do people keep bashing on films? If you have nothing nice to say don't say it at all. At least say "well I didn't like it". Instead of "I HATED IT!!!!!" Honestly it's a film. Give or take. M. Night actually has a brain. You are aware that this is a DVD news and reviews website, where we critically evaluate material submitted to us by movie studios, aren't you?

23rd October 2008 9:14#12

I was just going to ask the exact same question Chris. I think the key part of the question is the part where the studios that put the films out commission us for our opinions. I actually think Fox would prefer my musings on how silly/bad the film is to me giving it a big meh.

23rd October 2008 13:27#15

I want to watch this just because of the last screen cap of Wahlberg, the look on his face is priceless and I say that as a big admirer of a lot of his work, anyone who could make Planet of the Apes tolerable is to be admired in my opinion.........

23rd October 2008 16:14#18

Great review...might add it to my queue...sometime...and the first time I saw the trailer, I knew that it was going to suck; I mean, if you see Wahlberg doing c**ppy acting, you more than know that the movie will suck...oh well, where is my Departed sequel Scorsese!?!?!?

23rd October 2008 16:25#19

That googly-eyed, confused and wrinkled face is Wahlberg's only expression throughout the entire film. Great stuff! I agree wholeheartedly with Gabe's review except that I actually think the film IS so-bad that it's good. This is one of the most hilariously awful major studio films ever made. I laughed a heck of a lot. Don't miss out because you don't see this kind of completely inept filmmaking that often. I look forward to seeing those popmpous Shyammalan intros and deleted scenes, too, but am going to wait until the DVD hits the $1 bins (which it should be in by next week). Why are you eyein' my lemon drink?

23rd October 2008 19:47#25

I dub thee..."The C**pening". totally poor flick. There were a couple of really nice visuals and a genuinely terrifying bit with the old woman toward the end of the film but, on the whole, this is simply a turd.

23rd October 2008 20:15#26

WOW, I hope I won't get yelled at for HATING THIS MOVIE. What kind of a comment board is this? We're all fans of film... and fans of film are awesomely opinionated--whether that's gracious or extremely obnoxious depends on the flick. My favorite messages to read are the ones where people tear a film down in a funny way. Spraying everything with accolades gets boring really fast.

23rd October 2008 22:23#27

Ok, I'm a huge supporter of a film and when I read things like this, especially since the majority of people hated it, I just get a bit angry. First of all, people keep complaining about c**ppy remakes and sequels and superhero movies and the unoriginality in Hollywood. When a movie like this comes around, everyone bashes it! What do you want? Really! It's ridiculous to call this the worst film ever created that it's even worse than "Meet the Spartans"?! What's wrong with this country?

Second of all, this was meant to be a B-Movie. Gabe, you say there aren't any funny scenes. Well, I heard a lot of people, I mean, TONS of people saying this is the most hilarious movie they've ever seen! I can tell you some funny scenes right now:

Spoiler Talking to plant, calling hiself a douchebag, having the kids give Wahlberg advice about love, eating dessert with a guy, having a cough drop to see an attractive girl It's all there!

They also complain about the bad SPFX in the lion scene, which ironically, makes a B-movie a B-movie! It has bad effects! Wow. Probably that was intentional.

Then people complain about the performances. WTF is wrong with them?! I mean really! THEY AREN'T THAT BAD. It's as if people are bashing M. Night movies just because it's the "cool" thing to do right now. People would bash on ANYTHING and everyone can see that by the comments on this movie. First of all, the performances were not bad. It was thier character. Oh, gee! That's not rocket science! Wahlberg plays the cool, hip character. He doesn't want to be scared. He sometimes even acts funny. WTF is wrong with that?! Zooey is a character who does NOT want to show her emotions to people. "OMFG! She acts like a robot in this movie!" That's probably because she doesn't like showing her emotions to people! JESUS! When will this world ever learn?

23rd October 2008 22:40#28

wnicholas76 wrote: And Mark Wahlberg was so clueless in this movie, and he's playing a science teacher for crying out loud!

That's actually the whole point of the movie... There's no heroes in it, just very average stupid people who survive (or not) by pure luck. It's actually very cleverly done, even if of course you get a movie that's quite boring.

Not his worse movie (lady in the Water, my God!) but far from his best, The Village.

23rd October 2008 22:57#30

OMG - The last couple of comments are really scary. Way scarier than anything in THE HAPPENING, that's for sure. I can't believe anyone could even try to attempt to defend this film (one of the dumbest films ever), but there you go - some people actually think the film is good! The end of the human race and this planet must be near. Pray for mankind.

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